15 October 2006

pleasant valley sunday

Today, things I've found in the first hour of the day in the hard copy, would make good fish-and-chip wrapping stuff, newspapers.

Look, I know it's not on to sneer at what some people put in classified advertisements - unless you make a link to the Maoification and postmodernist relativism and lack-of-standards of public education - but some ads just really suggest themselves. In this weekend's classies, home entertainment section (and indeed, I am at home and being entertained), we find:


amplifier, audio fold quality.


Now, audiophile (which is what they meant, I presume) is not a commonly used word so you'd not expect an enormous number of folks to know it. But if they read their ad prior to submission, what do they think might be getting folded? And how?

Second, this one:


HiFi speaker, English two timer connected to hear
only.


OK, this one was obviously lodged over the phone I'd guess, but what on earth was the original meant to say?

Speaking of "to hear only", I always love the ads for hi-fi gear where the seller says "see working". Hmm, sorry, I can't quite make out the little electrons running thither and yon, but as a potential buyer I would love to hear it working. Think about it next time.

On a different tack entirely, Friday's AFR had a couple of opinion pieces of interest. Lenore Taylor ruminated on the T3 sale, making the seemingly evident point (well, evident to me) that regardless of how independent and whatever Geoff Cousins is meant to be, he's still a government appointee (seemingly forced on the board by the (insert gratuitously offensive description here, Taylor herself uses "vindictive") PM, so all of (make up your own descriptions, you don't need me to lead you) Minchin's protestations about the government giving up control of Telstra to the market are just hot air. As indeed most things he spouts are.

Second, a quite reasonable piece from some bloke at the libertarian Cato Institute about happiness surveys. Evidently the Cato Institute sees a threat to its mainstream brand of economics by the rising level of interest in the issues of why, if we're getting wealthier, are we not happier? There's some arguments about why a steady rate of growth leads to satisfaction as people can get more stuff and how, if growth stalls, we start hating foreigners who take our jobs and so on. There's no mention of the inputs to growth in terms of raw materials and there's an assertion that keeping up with the Joneses is a furphy. Which is a bit rich (ha ha) in the AFR Friday edition, whose centre secton is jam-packed with monstrously expensive houses, big cars, holidays to remote locations and, in this edition at least, the latest in golf clubs to make you play like Tiger.

There's also a small snark at happiness theory methodology, in that the people who carry out such surveys have an end in mind and so ask questions which suggest the obvious answers. Not that Cato and co have agendas, of course.

Bah humbug.

Later...

Press release gets reported as news, draws totally unsurprising response from vested interest pressure group. Does anyone else get as tired of this sort of 'reporting' as me?




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